Summary
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a pollution control technology that can be used to prevent the emission of CO2 to the atmosphere, permanently storing it deep below the Earth’s surface. The technology can also remove historic CO2 emissions directly from the air. Meeting international commitments to limit global warming will require billions of tonnes of CO2 capture and geologic storage by mid-century – a scale many times greater than seen today. While components of CCS have been available for decades, policies to drive its application to mitigate climate change are newer, and the scope of these policies has grown in recent years.
This report examines 13 significant projects that have employed CCS technologies at a large scale. Several of these projects have captured and stored CO2 primarily for commercial motives, such as increasing oil production. Some have sought to demonstrate new or existing technologies in a specific industry or at larger scales, or to gain experience with particular storage geologies. Relatively few have been required to adopt CCS to meet a regulatory requirement. The technical performance and operational challenges recorded by each of these projects are summarised and placed within the context of the diverse motivating factors behind their development.
Based on these case studies, the report highlights the following key points:
- Several large-scale projects, including Sleipner, the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, and Quest have consistently met high levels of technical performance, demonstrating an achievable standard that should – and must – be built upon by an increasing proportion of projects so climate goals remain in reach.
- Commonly cited ‘large-scale’ CCS projects represent a fraction of the many commercial technologies actively capturing, transporting, and storing CO2.
- Operational experience, technological learning, and innovation can help overcome technical challenges that arise as CCS is used at larger scales or in more diverse applications. Several large-scale CCS projects have been developed primarily to gain such experience and have led to clear improvements in reliability and performance. Maximizing continuous technical performance, however, is often subordinate to this goal.
- To help build public confidence and accelerate technology improvements, CCS projects should be encouraged or required to report their performance data and challenges as transparently as possible.
